The wine. And the fearless piece of me that wanted to be a part of it, even if I couldn’t control it. The fearless part of me knowing that just maybe it was the way to build a life that I wasn’t only good at, but that I loved.
He smiled. “You remember when you were a little kid, and you came into the winemaker’s cottage and announced that you wanted to be a winemaker? I was relieved when you changed your mind.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a life you have no control over. You do everything in your power and ultimately you have no control.”
I moved in closer to him, trying to avoid sounding ironic when I said it, what I knew to be the truth. “Didn’t you just describe everything worth doing?”
He smiled. “Not everything, wiseass.”
“Give me the exception.”
“Making clocks. That, you can control.”
“Why does that sound familiar?”
“I tried to convince you to become a clockmaker. I even took you into San Francisco one afternoon to go to the oldest clock store in the city, to watch the clockmaker do his work.”
“Seriously?”
He shrugged. “You had trouble telling time. I thought at the very least it would help.”
“Did it?”
“Not really.”
He closed his eyes. He was getting tired. I patted his hand, getting ready to leave him, to let him rest, to let my mother come inside and rest with him, the two of them quiet together, the way they belonged.
“So you’re staying? And I’m going. I’m going boating. I’ll hate every second of it, but I’m going.”
I laughed. “Why are you doing that to yourself?”
“It’s the only way to get where we want to be.”
He looked at me, making sure I heard him. They weren’t coming back to Sebastopol, or if they did, it wouldn’t be on the terms I was imagining. The vineyard saved, my father’s legacy, the way it had been, intact.
Then he smiled. “But you’ll be okay. You’re going to be a great winemaker for the same reason you’re a terrible driver.”
“Why is that?”
He shrugged, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “No one else has a clue what you’re doing, but at the end of the day, you get to where you want to go.”
I smiled, leaning in toward him, starting to cry.
“Okay, let’s not get dramatic. You really do have to work on the driving.”
He motioned toward the doorway, where my mother was walking down the hall toward us. “Are we not going to talk about the other guy?” he said. “Before your mother gets here?”
“What guy?”
He tilted his head. “Your mother will make a big deal about it.”
“Who?”
“Jacob. I’m talking about Jacob, of course.”
I pointed at him. “Don’t cause trouble.”
He smiled. “Look, if you don’t want to talk about it, just say that,” he said. “Just say, ‘Shut up, Dad.’ ”
“He’s not the reason.”
He shrugged. “In a way, he is. Actually, he’s the reason for all of it. A guy decides to buy a vineyard from a winemaker. Weddings get cancelled. The daughter goes crazy.”
“You’re talking crazy.”
“I’m not saying you’re going to marry him or anything,” he said. “Calm down.”
“That’s good.”
“We do have that tent, though,” he said.
I leaned in and hugged my father. I hugged him and felt it. The strength that came from him, that you couldn’t get from anywhere else.
My father leaned in close. Then he smiled, pushed my hair back off of my face. “Can I tell you, you’re my favorite kid.”
“You say that to all of us.”
“Well. That doesn’t make it any less true,” he said.
The Wedding There was supposed to be a wedding at our vineyard. And in the end, there was.
Five days after my wedding was to take place, my parents stood there together under a homemade altar. My father wore a sports coat and jeans. My mother wore a blue beret, the blue beret she’d been wearing the day she’d met my father, the day he’d gotten into her car and never gotten out.
It wasn’t an official ceremony. They were never officially divorced, but it felt official: Finn married them, and all their friends from town—from the life they’d built in Sebastopol—stood with them. All the local winemakers were there, Jacob included. Suzannah and Charles flew up to be there too.